Georgians
in Russia Harassed,
Pressured to Support Moscowby Paul Goble

On-going series: Crisis in the
Caucasus - 2008
The Russian / Georgian Conflict and Its Impact on AzerbaijanWindow on Eurasia: Original
Blog Article

Vienna, VA., August 22 ­ Some of the 500,000
ethnic Georgians who now live in the Russian Federation have
been beaten and robbed, and harassed by the Russian authorities
since the military conflict began, even as Moscow has apparently
pushed ethnic Georgian groups and individuals to denounce Georgian
President Mihkiel Saakashvili and the US as the chief culprits
in this war.

Earlier this week, the Bloomberg
news service reported that ethnic Georgians living in Russia
used to feel comfortable but now in the wake of the Russian intervention
in Georgia and anti-Georgian hysteria in the Russian press, in
the words of one, "feel like anyone can strike" out
at them at any time. (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aQuDkRd9UdOc)

The news service said that after the conflict began "a 55-year-old
man was beaten and robbed by six youths who had questioned his
ethnicity" and that "a 37-year-old attendant at a gasoline
station was spat on the day Georgia entered Ossetia," events
that the service suggested were not "isolated incidents.

Indeed, acts of intimidation
against ethnic Georgians may be increasing and becoming more
organized. The Bloomberg news service adds that in recent days,
"four unidentified men walked into a grocery shop run by
a Georgian in Moscow last week and it's been closed ever since,"
something that suggests threats were made.

As they have done whenever there
have been ethnic clashes, Russian officials have both played
down the role of ethnicity while proclaiming their commitment
to protecting minorities. On August 13, President Dmitry Medvedev
ordered Russian law enforcement officials not to "touch
law-abiding Georgians," an instruction that some would see
as open to abuse.

But even as this is going on,
representatives of Georgian diaspora organizations in Russia
have spoken out against the actions of President Saakashvili
in the current crisis, statements that appear to reflect a combination
of their own anger at the regime what they believe the market
will bear, and Russian government pressure to go along with Moscow's
line.

Yesterday, in the Russian Federation,
a large group of ethnic Georgians assembled in Moscow's Central
House of Journalists for a press conference which took place
under the rubric "Georgians Against the Policies of M. Saakashvili,"
a venue and a title that suggests the Russian government played
a key role in this event.

The participants then issued
a seven-point public appeal condemning what they called "the
anti-Georgian regime which has subjected the Georgian people
to fear and poverty, imposed tyranny and deprived the people
of an objective choice of a president and parliament. <http://www.nr2.ru/society/192417.html>

The statement, the text of which
is available at "><http://www.rusk.ru/st.php?idar=105404>
goes on to express its "apologies to the fraternal Ossetian
people" and its "deep and sincere sympathies to Ossetian,
Russian and Georgian mothers whose children died or were wounded
in this criminal and dirty adventure planned by the US and carried
out by the regime of Mihkiel Saakashvili."

Further, it declares that the
Georgians of Russian "condemn the gendarmist and cynical
policy of the United States which armed and directed the leadership
of Georgia and started the war in the Caucasus. M.Saakashvili,
under the diktat of the US, provoked and then drew Russia into
this war."

Moscow, according to this statement,
thus had no choice and every legal and moral right to reinforce
its peacekeeping contingent and "even more" to defend
its citizens which is the basis of the Constitution of the Russian
Federation." And for their role in this, George Bush and
Condoleezza Rice should be hauled before "an international
tribunal."

Almost all of this language
could have been lifted directly from Russian government controlled
outlets or even more from xenophobic Russian nationalist websites,
an indication that this document almost certainly was prepared
not by its nominal signatories but rather provided to them by
Russian government officials.

Indeed, the only part of the
statement which appears uniquely Georgian is its expression of
"hope" that "the Russian leadership and society
will not permit xenophobic attitudes to arise in Russian society
or any diminution of the rights of or persecution of individuals
on the basis of nationality." But even that formulation
follows the Russian script.

At almost the same time the
Moscow meeting was taking place, however, a group of ethnic Georgians
and Russians met in St. Petersburg for a roundtable on "Russia-Georgia:
the History of Relations, Cultural Ties, and Traditions"
which took a very different position than the Moscow group. <http://www.rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=750077>

Both in the speeches at the
roundtable and in the press conference that followed, "the
leitmotiv" was "the common guilt of the politicians
of Georgia and Russia for the war in South Ossetia," a view
that the Russian Orthodox and nationalist site "Russkaya
liniya" said represented "a very sad result."

It was almost as if, the site's
commentator suggested, "the representatives of the Georgian
community of the northern capital and those Russians who agree
with them could not find within themselves the strength to condemn
Mikhail Saakashvili" for what he, his government and the
Americans had done.

Clearly, if "Russkaya liniya"
and its backers had their way or if they had the chance to do
this over again, the participants in the St. Petersburg roundtable
would have been just as well organized and have issued just the
same statement as the one that came out in Moscow on the same
day.